Cancer and stress

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Ty Bollinger: You mentioned earlier that this is an industry that is based on patents and profits. So while we're using alliterations, tell me a little bit about the relationship between sugar and stress and cancer.

Chris Wark: Stress is a major component and we haven't even talked about this in the interview. I'm so glad you brought it up because what are the three causes of cancer? If we're looking at the three main causes it's pollution (environmental toxins), diet and lifestyle.

Unhealthy diet and lifestyle choices are going to produce sickness and disease in your body eventually. The smoker who gets cancer, right? Obesity is the number two cause of cancer; smoking is number one. Those are diet and lifestyle choices, but the third major cause is stress, and stress is a huge topic.

What happens is stress comes from negative emotions; it comes from not forgiving, it comes from bitterness and resentment and all negativity in your mind and in your life. It raises your anxiety. It raises your stress which starts in your mind being anxious, but that translates into your body. It raises your stress hormones to cope and that's adrenaline and cortisol. And those hormones are immunosuppressant.

And cortisol tells your liver to dump sugar into your bloodstream to give you energy; that's what that nervous energy is, stress energy. It's because cortisol is dumping sugar into your bloodstream, but then it causes intense sugar cravings to replenish.

This is why the term "comfort food" was coined, because people that are stressed seek high sugar foods because they're living on stress energy; they're depleting their sugar reserves. Glucose, really glycogen which is glucose, and they need to replenish it with sugar. And so in our world the nearest source of sugar is soft drinks and junk food and pizza and ice cream.

When you're stressed, you make bad choices. You make irrational, impulsive and illogical choices — not only about the food you eat, but just life in general; you make bad choices. And fear is a major stress emotion and when cancer patients are afraid and they're stressed they make illogical and irrational decisions. They agree to therapies and treatments that they look back on and say, "What was I thinking; why did I let them do that to me?" I hear that all the time from cancer patients.

"I don't know why I would ever let them give me chemo; I never wanted to do it. And now the cancer is back and it's spread and it's worse, and the chemo was a total waste. It did nothing for me and I'm pretty sure it made me worse." I hear that all the time. And why? Because fear is so powerful, and stress is so powerful and it affects the way you think and the decisions you make.